U.S.-Iran Conflict Settled Forever on Basketball Court

In its effort to contain and deter Iran, the U.S. has implemented crushing economic sanctions, secret counter-proliferation action, devastating Pink Floyd covers, and even the threat of possible air strikes.
But now the Iran-U.S. conflict, which has improved little since the
1979 revolution and hostage crisis, will finally see its conclusion and
ultimate resolution at a high-profile basketball match. The U.S. and
Iranian teams are squaring off today as part of the FIBA World
Championship in Turkey.

PBS Frontline's Neri Zilber writes,
"the tournament has a broader geopolitical dimension that has been
overlooked in these last days of summer. If 'serious sport,' as George
Orwell once said, 'is war minus the shooting,' then any matchup between
two ostensibly hostile states on the playing field, and not the killing
field, should be welcomed as progress and an opportunity for a thawing
of relations."

The last international sports match between the
two nations was a 1998 World Cup soccer competition in France, which
Iran won 2-1. Only five short years later, U.S. President George W. Bush
controversially declared Iran a member of the three-state "Axis of
Evil." The obviously retaliatory gesture has been followed by a steep
decline in U.S.-Iran relations; that the U.S. invaded two of Iran's
neighbors may have also played a secondary role.

After all the
harsh rhetoric and low-level violence, three decades of Iran-U.S.
tension will come to a close this afternoon. If the U.S. wins, Iran has
agreed it will give up its nuclear program and cede power to the Green
Movement. If Iran wins, President Obama says he will implement sharia
law, although he was probably going to do that anyway.